


lighthouse of the drowned

by wajjs



Series: Across The Universe (vld fics) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (social) drinking as coping mechanism during social gatherings, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, They are all older here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:27:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: Sometimes Lance would sit on the chair closest to the kitchen’s window, cup of coffee comfortably held within his hands.  He would stare out of the glass at the passing cars, the occasional stray dogs, the people walking by.  Sometimes his mind would fool him completely and there, standing right on the street in front of his tiny window, would be the love he once held dear.  Smiling, waiting, waving, wishing.  Then his grandma would scream at him to go get something from the grocery store and, with a blink, the spell would be broken.





	lighthouse of the drowned

**Author's Note:**

> I am supposed to be doing several other things instead of writing this, but my hands slipped... :')
> 
> I tried proof-reading this on my own, but if you happen to find something that doesn't quite make sense, let me know! Title comes from this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFdRPqjwyk)

 

 

**lighthouse of the drowned**

 

 

    To some people, the passing of time isn’t gracious.  Or generous.  Some people lose the strength of their muscles, the energy helping the rising of early mornings and the constant movement of late afternoons.  Joints have achings unknown years before, waists start feeling stiff.  Flexibility?  Memory of days past.  Some people lose hair, some joke with the figure lost, some watch their mane turn grey.

    Bags underneath tired eyes pile up, laughter lines start showing, frown lines, angry lines.  Paths the passing of time carves into every skin.

    But Lance has just turned thirty and he’s never felt so alive.  His old friends from high school look at him and laugh at themselves self-deprecatingly.  What is your secret, man, what do you do.  I don’t know, he always replies.  Not because he doesn’t want to share any secret he might have.  He just honestly doesn’t know the answer.

    Perhaps it’s thanks to every beauty routine he always sticked to with religious constancy during his younger years.  Perhaps it’s thanks to how he just never stops moving.  One day he’s playing with the local amateur  _ fútbol _ team, running all over the field and never getting tired.  On the good days he even manages to score a goal or two.  Other times find him driving his old van, his good old board a long-time friend chilling in the backseat, with no other destination than the beach closest to his town.  And once there he would enjoy the waves for hours, laughing, singing.  Sometimes he would lose his footing and he would fall with loud splashes, but he’d always recover, always ready to face the next wave.  But at times he’d stay at home, perfectly content, tending to his grandma, doing groceries, feeding and playing with their old house cat.

    He worked the night shifts as a server on one of the local bars three days of the week and sometimes during weekends.  Money wasn’t much but it was enough not to be a problem.  Grandma had her lifelong savings, and they still had half of Lance’s heirloom on reserve.  His income wasn’t particularly big, but it helped, and it made Lance feel less like a bloodsucking parasite and more like an actually functional human being.

 

    His old friend Hunk sometimes visited in between trips from the main city to other destinations Lance once bothered learning and now couldn’t remember.  He wore a suit that made him look like he belonged to the upperclassmen world since birth.  It made Lance proud, knowing that his good best friend got everything he deserved.  Keith had also moved with Hunk to the city.  Sometimes they would chat over the phone, and from the occasional conversations they had it was more than clear that he was as happy as he could be.

    Pidge had once been a steady part of their lives too, but they had left town to move to another country after being hired by an important multinational company. All thanks to their mad hacking skills. Sometimes they talked via Skype, or simply used Facebook’s messenger to send each other silly stickers.  Still, the bond they once had was undoubtedly lost.  Time and life have no mercy when carrying on.

    Sometimes Lance would sit on the chair closest to the kitchen’s window, cup of coffee comfortably held within his hands.  He would stare out of the glass at the passing cars, the occasional stray dogs, the people walking by.  Sometimes his mind would fool him completely and there, standing right on the street in front of his tiny window, would be the love he once held dear.  Smiling, waiting, waving, wishing.  Then his grandma would scream at him to go get something from the grocery store, that they had forgotten to buy toothpaste, that there was no more food for poor little Blue.  With a blink, the spell was broken.

    Lance had just turned thirty and it was impossible to feel more alive.  His grandma pinched his cheek after placing on the center of their round table a small cake she had made with her own two hands.  It was burnt and it seemed to be falling apart underneath the weight of the fillings, but it made Lance’s chest feel too tight with warmth and affection.  Perhaps  _ mamá y papá _ were looking at them with adoration in their gazes, phantasmagorical inklings of hands brushing tenderly over their heads, whispers of kisses on their cheeks, airy hugs, rosy voices rising from underneath the bug infested soil.  

    Lance has just turned thirty and he doesn’t think how his years spent studying what he loved at Uni proved to be worthless.  He doesn’t think of how much he sometimes wishes he had more than what he has now, because he doesn’t want to be ungrateful, doesn’t want to be greedy.  He doesn’t think of the train accident seventeen years ago that close with a loud crash the chance of ever seeing his siblings and parents again.  He doesn’t think of how he’s still technically single and so easily could be so for the rest of his life.

    Blue purrs as she rubs her whole lithe body against the side of his leg, tail curling.  He does think of his beloved pet and his beloved  _ abuela _ , he thinks of the love they give him unconditionally, come rain, come shine, come failure.  He thinks of the small cake his grandma made exclusively for him even though her hands are more shaky than steady and she sometimes forgets she’s standing.

    Hunk texts him the next day: “ _ Happy birthday, man! :-D I’m so sorry I couldn’t call you before, work is nasty crazy! _ ” And Lance laughs heartily because he  _ understands _ , and replies: “Thank you, bro! It’s ok! Good luck with that! ;-D”

 

    Lance is one week into being thirty and yet another one of his old classmates is getting married, he’s got the Facebook notification still open, he knows he’ll probably be invited and he knows he won’t want to go but he’ll attend the ceremony anyway because that’s just what he does.  He’ll get through waves of old friends that never were quite close asking: man, when will you get hitched? You’re living the single life, such a dream! And then their spouses would scoff, roll their eyes or flat out laugh.  Some eyed him pitifully, there goes Lance, his last relationship ended seven years ago and since then nobody ever seemed to want him for more than one night.

    And Lance would try to drown the voices with glass after glass of champagne first, wine next, beer last.   _ Have you heard that apparently he’s, you know, he’s into  _ pijas _ , man, he’s  _ puto _. Really? Man, that surely doesn’t surprise me, he was always so into beauty routines and shit; I always thought he was a  _ marica, _ no wonder nobody wants to be with him, he’s a freak _ .  Someone would approach him when all eyes are looking elsewhere, hey, wanna go somewhere more private? And Lance would laugh, shake his head, and move to talk to the same voices he has failed to drown.

     Smile, smile, nod here, talk now, yup.  Everything’s the same.  It’s all good.  Familiarity is easy to swim through.

 

—

 

    Lance is thirty-one and nothing changes.  A flirty comment here, a “call me” there, a friend saying “hey, my wife has this friend that’s single as well, you know” all over the place.

    Lance is thirty-two and he goes surfing.  Falls and takes longer than yesterday to resurface.  He still laughs and smiles and sings, but for the first time the ocean is stronger than his voice.  His smile is never quite true.

    Lance is two days from being thirty-three.  He’s sitting by the kitchen’s window, his grandma has been sleeping a lot lately.  Sleeping the whole day away.  Sometimes she would look at him and talk to him like he were her lost husband.   _ Mario, Mario, qué joven que estás. _  Sometimes Lance wasn’t Lance but his own father, sometimes Lance was someone he never met, his grandma’s father.   _ Papi, papi, te quiero, papá, te extraño, papá. _

    The coffee has turned cold inside the old cup held within his shaking hands.  He’s staring through the glass at the vision standing on the street in front of his house.  Tears start gathering at the corners of his eyes, though no muscle of his face makes a single movement.  Maybe he has stopped breathing when the vision does something it had never done before: the vision is crossing the street, hurriedly approaching the door, knocking desperately one time, two times, three, four—

     “Lance!” The vision’s voice is too clear to be just that, a vision, and Lance drops his mug to the floor, dark liquid spilling all over the tiles, the ceramic breaking into uncountable pieces.  “Lance!” The vision repeats, voice filled with love and hope and  _ so alive _ , that Lance lets out a shuddering breath.

    Tears are falling freely down his cheeks in rushed movements just like the mug fell, and Lance’s grandma is screaming at him from her bedroom to go see who it is already, and he’s moving, feet running from the kitchen to the main door, heart in his throat, stars behind his eyes, thoughts swimming violently.  Fuck, he’s crying and he’s an ugly crier, that’s what he thinks just as he undoes the lock and yanks open the door with more force than needed.

 

    The vision drops the nondescript black duffel bag surely filled with the few belongings they possessed to the floor.  Strong arms pull Lance into a long awaited embrace, and suddenly it hits Lance that this is not a vision, no, no, this is reality, this is a dream come true—

    “Shiro,” Lance chokes on a sob, face red from the effort crying implied.  His whole body was shaking uncontrollably, but he managed to push past it and wrap his arms around Shiro’s ever strong frame.  He can hear his grandma’s steps behind him, her startled gasp, Blue’s soft crooning, Shiro’s relieved laughter rumbling through his broad chest.

    “I promised,” Shiro manages to speak through his own tears, voice thick with affection and unconditional love, “I will always come back.”

    “I never doubted,” Lance laughter is the definition of pure happiness.  “I never doubted you.”

    “I’m sorry for making you wait so long,” they kept hugging right on the entrance of the house for all the noisy neighbours to see.  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

    “You’re back to stay, aren’t you?” He pushed through the crying, voice thin, barely able to ask.

    “I am.  Fuck, Lance.  I’m never leaving your side again.”

    “You’re forgiven, then,” Lance giggled, planting soft pliant kisses all over Shiro’s cheek.  “You’re forgiven.”

 

    Lance is thirty-three, there’s an arm wrapped lovingly around his waist, lips kissing his face.  The house is suddenly alive again, grandma’s in a better mood, Lance’s never quite good friends have a lot of things to say, the town gossips spirals and spirals into the sky.  

    Lance is thirty-three but, this time, he’s truly alive.

 

°

 

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
> fútbol — football (what the whole world -sans the usa- calls football)  
> mamá y papá — mom and dad  
> abuela — grandma  
> pijas — where I'm from, this is one of the many slang terms we use to refer to a penis  
> puto, marica — derogatory terms used to refer to homosexual men  
> Mario, Mario, qué joven que estás. — Mario, Mario, how young you are/look  
> Papi, papi, te quiero, papá, te extraño, papá. — Daddy, daddy, I love you, dad, I miss you, dad.
> 
> I hope you liked this story! Thank you for reading, and have a lovely day!


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